"Joy Ride: Show People & Their Shows" by John Lahr
The American drama critic John Lahr has been writing about the theatre and theatre folk since 1969, when the twenty-eight-year old graduate of Yale and Oxford turned up with the superlative "Notes on a Cowardly Lion." The choice of the iconic funnyman from "The Wizard of Oz" was not a coincidence; the author had been raised under the supersized shadow of his father, the brilliant and brilliantly-neurotic Bert Lahr. The younger Lahr proved that his exceptional first book was no nepotistic accident with his 1978 biography of British playwright Joe Orton, "Prick Up Your Ears." He is still active at seventy-four, having recently stepped away from his twenty-one-year stint as head drama critic for The New Yorker. The freedom of not having to spend night after night after night at the theatre has provided time for Lahr to assemble "Joy Ride: Show People & Their Shows" [W. W. Norton].
Over his years at The New Yorker, Lahr has specialized in profiles, which he describes as long and detailed mini-biographies of six to ten thousand words. "Joy Ride" gives us sixteen profiles of playwrights and directors, each accompanied by a Lahr review, or three, of productions from said author or director. Sandwiched in between are twelve reviews of other, unrelated productions. This provides 550 pages of reading about theatre, a mixture of contemporary and not-so-contemporary as the subjects include Miller, Odets, and Shakespeare. Readers interested in the drama, and particularly the provocative playwrights represented (including Shepard, Mamet, Kushner, Ruhl, Shawn and LaBute), will be especially happy with "Joy Ride." Lahr--who started his playwright-analytical career with his wondrous look at the unsettled world of Orton--knows what he is at.
As someone who has long appreciated Lahr's work, I myself find "Joy Ride" not quite as invigorating as expected. "In an ideal world, this volume would also include profiles of actors and of the makers of American musical theatre," Lahr tells us, "but the size of such a book was judged prohibitive for the pocketbooks of both the aficionados and the publishers." While I haven't recently reread Lahr's assorted profiles of musical theatre people, I remember how he incisively caught the essence of his subjects. (This can be seen, on a larger scale, in the keenly-observed biography of Bert Lahr and in his stunningly perceptive script for "Elaine Stritch at Liberty"). The above-mentioned playwrights make "Joy Ride" an important collection of profiles for people interested in high drama, yes. Musical comedy fans, though, will find this book of Lahr somewhat drier than expected.
Readers should also be advised that Norton is simultaneously issuing a paperback edition of Lahr's excellent 2014 biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh."
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The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age
by Al Hirschfeld, edited and with text by David Leopold
Illustrator Al Hirschfeld started working for Howard Dietz--advertising director for Goldwyn Pictures, then head of publicity for the new Metro-Goldwyn Mayer combine, and also a Broadway lyricist with a dozen or so standards to his credit--as a teenaged go-fer in 1921. Dietz inevitably found one of Hirschfeld's spare-time drawings in the wastebasket, rescued it, and ran it as an ad.
The busy freelancer soon added newspapers as his clients, starting with the New York Herald Tribune in 1926 and the New York Times in 1928--this while holding down an annual contract with M-G-M. (Hirschfeld's advertising campaign for Laurel & Hardy--whose distinctive physical features were perfect for the caricaturist's style--is said to have cemented the image of the odd couple in the public eye.) Hirschfeld's always canny and usually kidding drawings came to be seen as a badge of honor along Broadway; in the many weeks when a handful of shows opened, it was seen as a definite slight if Al and his editors skipped your show in favor of a competitor deemed more worthy.
A book full of Hirschfeld drawings provides theatrically nostalgic delights, of course; but many of us already have a Hirschfeld omnibus on our shelf. Now comes "The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age" [Alfred A. Knopf], and it brings us Hirschfeld with a difference. The book has been edited by David Leopold, who spent a quarter century working with Hirschfeld and now serves as creative director of the Hirschfeld Foundation. Leopold has not simply culled drawings and provided annotations; he gives what amounts to a running biographical and cultural narration.
Three hundred fifty-plus Hirschfelds, not on a week-by-week basis but all at once on your coffee table, can slightly dull the senses. (Look, there are the Lunts again. . . .) Leopold gives us not only the drawings but Hirschfeld himself; as one can imagine, he was quite a man. Some newspaper illustrators might have worked in a vacuum, but not Al; he was very much a part of the theatrical community. He also inhabited diverse worlds, drinking with Hemingway in Paris, playing semipro baseball with seventeen-year-old Lou Gehrig, and introducing George Gershwin to Oscar Levant.
"The Hirschfeld Century" presents the art and the man, making it far more than just another fascinating picture book. Al has his own ongoing testament, the former Martin Beck Theatre on West 45th Street. The present volume, in large part due to the ministrations of Mr. Leopold, also serves as a fitting tribute to the man who illustrated Broadway.
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"Joy Ride: Show People & Their Shows" by John Lahr is available from W.W.Norton. "The Hirschfeld Century" by Al Hirschfeld and David Leopold is available from Alfred A. Knopf.